A DAY LATE AND A DOLLAR SHORT
By Terry McMillan
Viking, 432 pages, $25.95
Reading Terry McMillan’s fifth novel, “A Day Late and a Dollar Short,” you may initially feel a little embarrassed about making a time commitment to something that is essentially entertaining but not serious. But about halfway through the book, you develop an attachment to the characters, forgive the work its less-than-breakneck pace and head for the freezer for a pint of Haagen-Dazs to complete your self-indulgent bliss. By the last pages, you’re weeping. You’re laughing. You’re hooked.
“A Day Late and a Dollar Short” is the story of a middle-class African-American family. It focuses on Viola, whose first-person, Chapter 1 account of how she ended up in a hospital because she was “worrying about kids” and her estranged husband, Cecil, sets an intimate, no-holds-barred tone for the book, and establishes its theme: “One thing I do know about men and kids is that they always come back. They may be a day late and dollar short, but they always come back.”
Subsequent chapters are all first-person stories told, in turn, by those kids — Paris, Charlotte, Janelle and Lewis — and by Cecil and Viola. Like many modern-day families, this one is full of compelling dysfunction. There are addictions, jealousies and vices, along with selfishness, stubbornness, foolish pride, loneliness and lost opportunities. McMillan creates strong, credible voices for her characters and uses alternately irreverent, comic and emotional dialogue to take readers from Viola’s initial asthma attack through the stormy months that follow.
So many things happen: control-freak Paris’ love affair with painkillers; Charlotte’s anger at her husband’s secrets and Paris’ “perfect” world; Janelle confronting her child-abusing husband; Lewis’ struggle to stay sober and find some self-respect; and Cecil’s attempt to start life over in his 50s with a new wife and a new baby.
As in McMillan’s earlier works — most notably “Learning to Exhale” and “How Stella Got Her Groove Back” — rich characters drive the novel.
Three caveats: First, the pace is slow in this novel, especially in the beginning. At fault is that same first-person narrative technique that helps McMillan create such wonderfully complex characters. Because each of the six main characters is given a chance to explain his or her background during these initial chapters, the first 100 pages of the novel become a sort of tiresome exposition of the past.
Second, while various husbands, boyfriends and a brother have their moments in the story spotlight, male characters here are neither as strong nor as interesting as the women.
Finally, while the ending is a tear-jerker, it wraps up everything a little too neatly. Characters are not only emotionally healed and reconnected, but their financial, career and relationship problems end in unnaturally tidy resolutions as well. It’s a little lame, but, like the last two-thirds of “A Day Late and a Dollar Short,” it’s still oh-so-good.